Some mobile computing devices with limited display capabilities are also provided with web browsing capability. For example, a personal digital assistant (PDA) may include a wireless modem and web browsing software. As another example, a cellular phone may include a display and web browsing software. But because of typical limitations of these devices (e.g., power, memory, display resolution, screen size), they may not be capable of adequately rendering content from the internet that is intended for full-sized computers (e.g., desktop computers, laptop computers, etc.). For example, a display of a PDA or cell phone may be incapable of displaying anything other than text or simple icons because of its display resolution and screen size. Alternatively, the rendering of content by the device may be of too poor quality to be useful. For instance, a picture from a web page that is displayed on a mobile device may be unintelligible because of the display's low resolution, and/or small screen size.
Similarly, mobile computing devices typically may not capable of adequately rendering audio or video streams that may be available to it. For example, a PDA may not include an audio system, or its audio system may be capable of generating only lower quality audio. Such a PDA may not be capable of adequately rendering, for example, an MP3 music file available from the internet.
In some instances, the communication link through which the mobile computing device is linked to the Internet may be a bottleneck. For instance, the bandwidth of a cellular link may not permit adequate rendering of a video stream.
In general, content available via the Internet may not be able to be rendered as intended on many mobile computing devices.